Pain had been a constant companion since I first woke up. Pain of the body. Pain of the mind. Pain of the soul. Experiencing more than any kid had the right to, I was simply glad it hadn’t driven me mad yet. But maybe I was mad, would explain why I held a molten egg in my hand the day before.
I could try to chalk it up to being my soul's fault, but my soul me wasn’t it? So if my soul was mad, then I must truly be disturbed.
Wiping away these stray thoughts, I grimaced as I felt the dusty wasteland that I use to call my mouth beg me for water. The irritation from my bleeding chapped lips, and swollen tongue was a less than a pleasant experience.
Trying to sit up, I mentally prepared myself as I tried looking at my left hand, expecting to find nothing but blackened remains.
Seems my strange body had done it again as I found it completely intact, as though yesterday’s bout with insanity had never happened.
It was pink and looked bony but it was there. Enduring the soreness, and feeble feeling across my body, I looked at the small mirror I kept to the side of my little nest of blankets.
My eyes went wide as stared at little more than a skeleton wearing a suit of skin. If I had been on the verge of being malnourished before then I definitely had gone far, and beyond that now.
My mouth still begging me to provide it with sweet relief, I activated my ring, grasped a vase full of stream water, and tried to down it quickly. This ended up being a bad idea as I quickly end up a coughing mess within seconds.
“Better drink it slowly next time, or I’ll be known as the idiot that choked to death drinking water”
After gathering myself from almost drowning, I felt the pain in my throat still throbbing but at least the thirst was gone. Laying back down in my nest I relaxed and waited for an hour as I let the water get absorbed into my body. It seemed to be have been a good idea as a lot of the soreness in my body eased up. This allowed for greater forms of movement without inducing nerve-wracking pain across my body.
Inspecting once again the malnourished boy in the mirror that happened to be me, I sighed and pulled out a ton of food from my ring, preparing myself to cook. Though my body wasn’t demanding me to eat I had come to the conclusion that it didn’t seem to be able to. Still, I knew for a fact that if I remained like this it would severely stunt my growth, and that something I really didn’t want to happen. Being small sucked, being small forever would really fucking suck.
I had made a little oven with a chimney using stones I found around, sealing it with mud that once dry was as hard as stone. With it, I cooked myself some scrambled eggs with shredded pieces of jerky. It produced a divine smell that actually caused my normally unresponsive stomach to grumble. Using a clean knife I cut slices off the loaf of bread and made myself a good old fashion sandwich.
Three sandwiches later, and a pleased stomach, I laid down once again in my nest to take a food nap. I was going to burn through a few weeks of supplies to get back to my original weight but there was nothing I could really do about it.
Feeling something hard on my back as I tried to fall asleep I tossed around the blankets until I found what was causing the discomfort.
A goddamn idiot would have been the nicest words to describe myself, as I stared at the object I had risked my life the day before to retrieved. Having a child's attention span sure did suck.
At a quick glance, it appears no different from yesterday when I believed it was simply glowing just a soft red. This changed though when giving it a more detailed examination showed it was constantly cycling through various shades of red. Sometimes it would be crimson, then pink, then scarlet, then fresh blood red. It didn’t seem to stop as it just keeps rotating through different shades.
Things got really strange when as though sensing me staring at it, the object began to pulsate. Scaring me with the sudden development I dropped the object into my nest were it began radiating heat, and the pulsations gained a time.
Recognition dawned on me.“That looks an awful lot like a heartbeat.” Nervous sweat began to drip down my neck, as the strange egg-shaped object on my bed began to glow as brightly as when I first found it.
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Inducing a change in its surrounding, all the mana began to rush towards the egg like a primal tidal wave. As it slowly converged on the egg the heat rose greatly, and I watched my beloved blankets begin to catch fire. Too afraid to move I laid still as the strange egg I had picked up the day before started burning down my home.
If things continued this way my entire shack was going to turn to ashes, and I would be left homeless once more. Feeling my eyes mist up at the injustice, I barely held the dam that was about to burst.
Why did my soul make me get this egg only to have it burn down my home, was that not simply self-harm? Wait didn’t it let me severely burn myself yesterday simply to retrieve the egg….
“My home….” I whispered as the tears broke through.
Completely unaware of my misery the egg burned all the blankets to dust, as flames were like a thirsty dog licking the walls of my shack.
I was about to abandon the shack to its fate when the mana in the area surged once more this collapsing quickly where I believed the egg to be. Even the flames seemed unable to resist as the surrounding fire in my shack was absorbed into the small egg.
Now only the egg and the surrounding ashes of my blankets remained. The room was silent besides the steady heartbeat that came from the egg.
“Is it over?” I slumped to my knees glad I wasn't going to lose my home. Whatever that thing was it sure was causing me a lot of grief. Maybe I should just get rid of the thing, and screw whatever my soul might tell me.
“Crack!” A sharp sound pierced my thoughts, and my eyes focus back in on the egg. The once smooth surface had a large crack running down its side. “Crick!” Once again the sound seemed to enter directly into my mind as I watched on in fascination. The crack had expanded into dozens of smaller ones.
I became transfixed as it hit me. The heartbeat, the egg shape, the connection my soul was giving me towards it, all these were clues I had been ignoring! The strange object that fell from the skies was actually a living creature!
My breathing became heavy, and a crescent moon expanded on my face. Unparalleled energy filled every fiber of my being, and my thoughts were moving at lightning speed.
“Would it be safe? Could I keep it? Should I keep it? How should I feed it if I kept it?” Question after question filled my mind, but unlike most of the ones, I already had the thoughts of these fill me with unbelievable joy.
A friend. A companion. Another living being to end this godforsaken loneliness that left me quivering uncontrollably every other night. An unknown dream had been granted and I was ecstatic. My previous worries over my shack were all but forgotten as I began to imagine a future where I wasn’t completely alone!
Like a statue, I stood there, unable to move my body, or retract my eye’s from the birth of a new creature into this world.
The cracks continued to spread on the surface of the egg, each time it looked like it was about to break smaller cracks seemed to form, but the struggle seemed to grower weaker as time went on.
“What going on? Why isn’t it hatching?!” Anxiety began to gnaw at my heart as I realized what was going on. Eggs that didn’t hatch properly were no different from the stillborns of mammals!
My eyesight was dimming around the edges, and my breathing became heavy and uneven. It appeared that after providing me with a glimmer of hope, the reality was about to crush it before it was even was born.
“NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!NO! Feeling the savage touch of insanity begin to take hold in my mind, I jumped forwards without a care at how I would land.
Diving, and badly scraping my knees stone floor, I softly scooped the scalding egg into my hands as I tried to gently scrape off the shell without harming the creature inside.
My hands were bleeding from burns once more but I ignored them as I peeled back the shell to find an ugly little ball of wet fluff. Besides its red color, it looked just like a newborn chick.
I could feel the weakest of heartbeats so it was still alive, but I was scared, what if it died in my hands, it seemed to lack the energy to even breath. “Had dousing its heat yesterday been a bad idea. Was it my fault it was going to die?” Did I somehow wash away some of the energy it needed to survive!?” The questions just wouldn't stop attacking my conscious.
The tears flowed freely as I didn’t know what to do to save it. Sensing my disturbed state my soul began to rotate slowly. A soft mist of energy was emitted and sent out towards the small chick.
I began to glow a soft violet as a wave of mana the size of nothing I’d ever felt was sent from my soul into the small chick in my hands.
The once reddish chick was rapidly losing its colors, as though it was becoming sun bleached. Its feathers and fur, then paled as it eventually settled on a white hue shaded with violet at its tips.
Pulling it up to my face I softly hugged it, and prayed to whatever is in the world might call itself a god to keep the little thing alive.
Something seemed to be listening to me as I felt the soft feathery fur brush itself on my face and the soft crying, and chirping of the bird.
Watching that the poor little thing that had almost never been born into this world, I realized how similar it was to a small freshly lit ember. Even the smallest breezes held the potential to end its feeble existence.
Hugging the chick closer to my face, a feeling of peace settled over my heart. I decided that despite how scared I was of this world I lived in, to protect this little ember from the harms it might bring, I wouldn’t hesitate risk my life. It was now my family, and I would die first before becoming alone again.